About This Wiki

Training and development are one of the most critical areas to the success of an organization and their workforce to facilitate mission accomplishment. For this reason knowledge management is essential in training to maintain the value and usefulness of the training function. In 2011, OPM created the Training and Development Policy Wiki (Wiki) for Federal government training and development practitioners. The shared goal of Wiki users is to learn, share relevant information, and collaborate across the government on all matters related to Federal training and development. The OPM Wiki is open to everyone to view and search for content. However, only Federal Government employees may register and post content tools, resources and best practices directly onto the wiki. All users are encouraged to provide comments relevant to the page topic thus making the wiki a “living” and ever-evolving resource.

What Is A Wiki?Named after wiki-wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, wikis are essentially Web pages that anyone — or, in the case of the OPM Wiki, anyone with permission — can create or edit. The most well-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by anyone who desires to contribute. This may sound like utter chaos but it is not. Many regard Wikipedia as a well-researched, well-written, and highly regarded source of information. As is the case with the OPM Wiki, if one person makes incorrect or inappropriate changes to an entry, others can roll the page back to the way it was before, or keep the changes and edit them further. Many people police the site (or at least those areas in which they have expertise), fact-checking and editing as necessary, so the quality of the content generally remains high.

"The Federal Training and Development Wiki is another example of how OPM employees are innovating every day," said former OPM Director John Berry. "The Wiki improves efficiency and best practices for agencies by providing a forum to share ideas and training tools. This will help agencies address their learning and development needs to best support the mission and career success of federal employees. I am proud of our program experts for developing this award-winning tool."

Additionally, this accessible and convenient Federal space allows training practitioners to quickly scan for what they want, link to sources or data and contribute where they feel they can add value. The end product is transparent and allows instant sharing of knowledge Governmentwide.